Unpacking the real reasons behind student fragility

P C Saidalavi

Fragility has become a buzzword among educators describing students in the aftermath of Covid-19. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘fragile’ as ‘not strong and likely to become ill or sick,’ yet when teachers label their students fragile, they almost always refer to mental well-being rather than their physical health. It is often lamented that the
pandemic generation of students is “lost”.

How were they lost? They missed out on peer learning, socialisation, interpersonal engagement, and the intimacy of in-person interaction. Instead, they were glued to the screen. With social mingling restricted, their connections were virtual--and those measures have had devastating effects on their learning, personal development, and mental health.

Learning is a measurable yardstick. During Covid, students learned less. They absorbed less from teachers and even less from their peers. This was visible across the spectrum. A student entering the undergraduate programme seemed to have learnt very little through two years of higher secondary schooling. They are clueless about topics once common in school, a view shared by teachers at every level.

On a daily basis, we encounter students who feel like fish out of water. They struggle to articulate their distress. Schools and universities have responded to this crisis by appointing counsellors--but those counsellors are overbooked and overwhelmed. Assignment deadlines slip, extension requests multiply, and exhaustion is rampant. All my colleagues worry endlessly over students’ vulnerability--even a looming exam or a firm deadline can trip them into crisis. As teachers, we hear their requests and empathise.

Yet, I have been wondering if our students are more fragile than us—adults. Adults also encountered isolation during the pandemic. We too lost social contact, felt lonely, and lacked the daily virtual sessions that kept the students connected. So is Covid the sole culprit? The answer appears to be no.

‘Life is hard,’ parents have long told children, recounting their own travails and tribulations to highlight modern comforts. Compared to
our parents’ or grandparents’ lives—in amenities and living standards—we have come a long way. If life has always been hard, can we blame all fragility on Covid? Probably not. Perhaps the pandemic merely accelerated a crisis brewing
for years.

In the past decade, mobile phones and the Internet have exposed everyone--even those in remote communities—to life beyond their immediate surroundings, as Assa Doron and Robin Jeffrey noted. Covid thrust open these doors to youngsters. Every parent had to ensure that their wards had access to a smartphone and the Internet. With this technologisation of society, as Cal Newport notes, our attention span has reduced, becoming increasingly less able to devote our time to important tasks without being distracted.
The urge to look at the screen is irresistible.

Yet, our teaching methods have barely changed. We still rely heavily on lecture-style classrooms. How can we adapt educational methods with the technologisation of society?

We must involve students more actively in learning. The first impediment to such practices seems to be the classroom structure. They are not architecturally designed to encourage sitting together in groups, fostering peer learning and discussions, and cheering interpersonal engagements. They follow an individualistic approach, relegating peer learning and socialisation to outside the classrooms.

In a technologised society, our youngsters have become increasingly alone outside the classrooms, more glued to their smartphones and laptops, virtual worlds and trending styles in the alternate world. We as teachers need now to create more opportunities for peer learning and socialisations inside the classrooms more than ever. If we do not become successful in achieving that, we
will continue to blame our young people, calling them fragile and vulnerable. The problem is deep and structural, and we, as teachers, have a big role to play.

(The writer is an assistant professor, Department of Sociology, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.